XCOM: Enemy Unknown was one of our favorite games last year, but the brilliant turn-based strategy game lacks the modding support we hope for in big PC games. In a new interview, XCOM designer Garth DeAngelis says that modding tools aren't “on the table currently,” but that doesn't mean they're never coming.
“Technically, sure, there's a lot of support for [Unreal Development Kit] and modding and things like that,” DeAngelis told PCGamesN . “And, if we were to do it, we'd want to do it right. We'd provide the proper level of tools and support and that takes a little more planning and time to get that right and we're not on that right now.”
There are some mods available for Enemy Unknown at the XCOM Mod Nexus, yes. But without dedicated dev tools and an established community, the mod nexus offering will never be as robust as, say, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 's 581 pages of Steam Workshop mods .
Altering game data will be a bit easier in Enemy Unknown's expansion pack, XCOM: Enemy Within , though. XCOM senior designer Anand Gupta told PCGamesN that in Enemy Within, “[a]ll the stuff you'd expect to be in the easily accessible data, the .ini files, is. Like the 'How much does a mech cost?' stuff is relatively easy for players to touch... We also did make an effort to move more core game data into those things, things that we didn't have to. It doesn't rise to the level of tool support or editor support. But we did make it more accessible for people who wanted to tweak those files.”
Enemy Within comes out on November 15, and I'm looking forward to seeing what devoted fans some up with. Until dedicated modding tools arrive someday, it's the best we're going to get.
Thanks, PCGamesN .
